• NHTSA Wants Black Box to Monitor Your Every Driving Move,
• Merchant of Chaos Space Rock Could Hit Earth Friday 13^th, 2036
• How U, S, and Chinese Forces Fought in Bosnian War
• Reich Glum About Jobs and Economy
• Hama/al Qaeda/Muslim Brotherhood In Sinai Attacks
• Flip-Flopper-In-Chief
• 14-Year Old Girl Beaten To Death for Being Raped
• Beatles First Arrived 47-Years Ago.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration wants to put a black box- similar to a flight data recorder installed in airliners–  in every new car sold in America. This could quickly lead to Pervasive surveillance even with real-time transmission of data to a bund of faceless bureaucrats who could easily mine the data to learn the intimate details of your life.

Plus with states and cities hungry for dollars these gadgets could dwarf the invasive red-light cameras issuing citations ( traffic tickets) and levying big fines.

Borders and now Barnes and Noble have been shuttered in downtown Santa Barbara leaving three private bookstores in the town. The ratio of bookstores to beer joints is now 50 to 1. Parking and its costs are the bane of downtown. Of course bookstores imply residents can read.

Apophis is a Rose Bowl sized rock, over 1,000 feet long, whizzing around our solar system that is expected to nudge the earth’s upper atmosphere on April 13^th, 2036 a Friday coming a hair’s breadth from smacking into the Earth with the force of 125,000 Hiroshima sized nuclear bombs. It is not big enough to end life on earth but it would sure make a mess.

Apophis was an Egyptian mythological serpent that some stories refer to as the Serpent of Chaos, or the serpent that the cat goddess Bastet fought for millions of years.

Russian scientists say there is just enough chance the thing could hit earth that plans to divert it should be made to divert it off course by meeting it in deep space. Because the U. S. does not have a deep space vehicle and its space exploration budget has been eviscerated the effort would have to go through the Russians, Chinese. Or maybe India.

Chevrolet is coming out with a new feature on their cars that will let drivers update their Facebook status in the car. I was getting so bored talking on the phone and texting while driving. — Leno

Recent flight tests of the surprisingly advanced Chinese J-20 stealth fighter at a Chengdu aircraft factory are ringing alarm bells inside the Pentagon. Invisible to radar, the high-tech aircraft is upping the ante against the U.S. Navy and Air Force in the Pacific theater. The war between Croats and Serbs was supposed to have been an American-less conflict by UN “peacekeeper” and few mentioned that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army were active combatants fatally opposing UN forces. Colonel Hackworth’s latest book The Price of Honor “fictionalizes” the clandestine U. S. Role in the conflict even uniformed as Canadians troops.

The takeoff of a Chinese-built stealth aircraft should come as no surprise. It traces its inception to a distant Southern European battlefield more than a decade ago, when the Pentagon and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army fought the world’s first electronic war.

As NATO forces based in Albania launched their invasion to “liberate” Kosovo in May 1999, the U.S. Air Force unleashed over the Yugoslav capital its most sophisticated aircraft-the stealth B-2 Spirit bomber and F-117 Nighthawk fighter. On the second night of the Belgrade bombing campaign, however, things went horribly wrong when a Nighthawk was hit with stunning accuracy.

The downing of the U.S. plane realized the worst fears of the electronic-warfare team at the National Security Agency (NSA), whose deputy director at the time was Gen. Michael Hayden. The most expensive U.S. weapons program in history had an Achilles heel-one that made it vulnerable to, of all things, the lowly TV.

The stealth fighter’s electronic cloaking system and low-reflection profile are invisible to radar signals, but television signals wrap around objects-for example, the corners of buildings. By computer-imaging the patterns of reflected waves with a detection system known as passive coherent localization (PCL), Chinese air-defense experts could easily detect the “bright cherry-red profile” of an incoming stealth plane. The Yugoslav federal army zeroed in on the target with Russian-built Kup missile batteries and a MiG interceptor, as described by the former head of Jane’s Defense Weekly.

To prevent further losses of stealth aircraft, the U.S. Air Force bombed a television station in Nis and Radio Television Serbia (RTS) headquarters in Belgrade. Cruise missiles exploded strands of carbon fiber over electric power lines to prevent their use as TV signal receivers. (At the time, I referred to the anti-stealth air-defense strategy as “McLuhan’s War,” after the media theorist Marshall McLuhan, who had decades earlier suggested that television news feeds were undermining public support for the Vietnam conflict and creating a global village.)

The Yugoslav military retrieved television transmitters from the bombed-out RTS tower and delivered them to the Chinese Embassy, which immediately began broadcasting late-night Chinese movies. The foreign diplomats had a good alibi, since some 6,000 illegal migrants from China heading for Western Europe were stranded in Yugoslavia and had no other entertainment.

The pilot of the F-117 parachuted, took evasive action and was retrieved by a NATO helicopter, but the aircraft was disassembled by local farmers and the critical parts auctioned. The Russians took the external radar-absorbing coating material, while the Chinese military attaché obtained the internal electronic cloaking system. Air Force One contains similar technology, a hot-wired cocoon of copper filament spun inside its skin, which renders it invisible to radar-guided missiles. Also included in the package were some angular exhaust vents that suppress the jet’s heat signature. A commercial cargo plane from Hong Kong was spotted by satellite picking up large crates at Belgrade Airport.

Americans may be tempted to conclude that the Chinese stole or pirated the stealth ware, but the fact is that the technology was captured from invaders as a fair prize of war.

Just days after the F-117 downing, Pentagon officials gave a stern warning to China’s Foreign Ministry to return the stealth parts or face dire consequences within two weeks, according to European military officers interviewed by Jens Holsoe, Kosovo correspondent for the Danish newspaper Politiken. The Chinese diplomats were speechless and clueless, since electronic warfare was run by the People’s Liberation Army and classified top secret.

Around midnight of May 7-8, 1999, the Pentagon threat came due. A joint special forces team of British and Kosovar commandos pointed laser beams at the rear wall of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade. Five smart bombs, delivered by a high-flying B-2 bomber, struck the PLA defense attache’s basement office with pinpoint precision. The commandos entered the compound pointing flashlights and a video camera “as if searching for something,” according to neighbors interviewed by Japanese intelligence agents posted in Belgrade. Earlier that week, the Yugoslav capital was swirling with rumors that President Slobodan Milosevic was residing as guest inside the Chinese Embassy. Instead, two young journalists from Guangming Daily, moonlighting as translators of Serbian, were killed in the blasts. After several minutes, the raiders ran from the site just before flames erupted out of the basement.

Within minutes, an American officer posted at the NATO signals-intelligence base in Vincenza, Italy, startled his European colleagues by shouting, “We got the bastards!” From his joyous outburst and their maps, the Europeans knew immediately that the embassy attack was premeditated. But just before the daily 10 a.m. press conference in Brussels, a correspondent for an American newsmagazine overheard a junior officer suggesting to the NATO press spokesman that the bombing was an “accident due to an out-of-date map.”

Following up on this claim from Hong Kong, where the CIA-Pentagon mapmaking agency, whose staffer explained that the map aboard the B-2 was correct to within minutes of the raid and that the highly professional cartographers were unjustly forced to take the blame by “more powerful agencies.” By then, thousands of enraged Chinese civilians were hurling stones at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, while indoors, by a fireplace, the U.S. ambassador hurriedly burned documents on American spy activities in China.

In the words of a National Intelligence Council veteran, a “civil war” was breaking out between the White House and State Department on one hand, and the Pentagon and the CIA on the other. Prior to authorizing the bombing, President Bill Clinton had been led to believe that the target was the base of a Serbian militia unit that was conducting ethnic cleansing and not a diplomatic compound. Despite the high-level deception and blatant violation of international law, Hayden, the U.S Air Force general in charge of electronic warfare operations went on to become the director of the NSA and the CIA.

While the corporate media repeated the false mantra of an “accidental bombing,” the myth of the invincibility of American military technology was shattered.

Thus the true story of a downed American Nighthawk was incinerated in the flames of a Chinese embassy in Southern Europe. Yet now, like a phoenix rising from its ashes, the mysterious bird is reborn in China, spreading its dark wings to soar over the moonlit Pacific.

Two hundred million people did not watch the Super Bowl. Who are these people and why are we allowing them to coexist with us? - Jimmy Kimmel

Robert Reich is standing tall given his 4-10.4 inches height the economist and Clinton-era Labor secretary, says a stock market “correction” is now certain. Essentially, there are now two economies, he says, - the economy of the rich Wall Street and Washington types who are enjoying the Dow’s surge past 12,000 and a corporation cash pile in excess of $1 trillion, and then there is the rest of America.

The other Americans, he writes, are suffering and waiting for the cash hoard to turn into jobs. With all that cash in hand, “you’d expect jobs be coming back. But you’d be wrong,” Reich writes on his blog.

The most recent jobs report showed just 36,000 new jobs in January. The headline number dropped to 9 percent from 9.4 percent, but the actual jobs number is very bad news, Reich contends.

“Remember, 125,000 are needed just to keep up with the increase in the population of Americans wanting and needing work. And 300,000 a month are needed - continuously, for five years - if we’re to get back to anything like the employment we had before the Great Recession,” he writes.

Before the Super Bowl, Homeland Security Secretary Janet ‘Big Sis’ Napolitano told everyone, “If you see something not right at the Super Bowl, let somebody know.” Immediately after Christina Aguilera sang the national anthem, 50 million people called. — Leno

Hamas plans to follow up its attack on the Egyptian-Israel-Jordanian gas pipeline Saturday, Feb. 5, with more large-scale operations against Israel, using Egyptian Sinai as its launching-pad.

Since the uprising began in Egypt two weeks ago, more than 1,000 Hamas gunmen have infiltrated North Sinai from the Gaza Strip and seized control of the region. They were followed by Al-Qaeda cells which redeployed from Iraq in the Gaza Strip. Hamas has established a command center in North Sinai for coordinating its operations with the Muslim Brotherhood in Cairo.

 Israeli officers serving say that the situation there was getting dangerously out of control: Hamas was giving free rein to lawless elements - not only Bedouin smugglers but other international networks, some working hand in glove with Somali pirates to smuggle into Israel armed criminal gangs posing as asylum and job seekers, prostitutes and vast quantities of drugs.

Those sources believe that Hamas and al Qaeda terrorists are sneaking into Israel from Sinai under cover of the swelling illegal traffic.

Hamas’ attack on the gas pipe near El Arish which cut supplies to Israel and Jordan proves to have been its opening shot. The investigation found that two separate Hamas teams, reaching their target in four new minivans, had conducted not one but two explosions - one hit the Sheikh Zuweid station and the second blew up a one-kilometer long section of the pipe. The Egyptians have not yet started repairs.

Sunday, Feb. 6, Egyptian soldiers caught another team of five armed men on their way to blow up the pipeline’s southern section to keep it inactive for a lengthy period. Three were Palestinian Hamas terrorists from the Gaza Strip and two Bedouin hired as accomplices.

Monday, Feb. 7, a second armed attack on the Egyptian police station in El Arish turned out to have been carried out by an Al Qaeda-linked cell from the Gaza Strip.Hamas and Mumtaz Durmush, head of Jaish al-Islam (The Army of Islam) which is linked to Al Qaeda, have struck a deal for Hamas to transfer the Islamists to Sinai and provide them with the weapons and explosives for attacking Israeli patrols along the Egyptian border and Egyptian security forces posted there.

Not only are those jihadist cells ranged on Israel’s southern doorstep but it is only a matter of time before they walk through the door along with the Palestinian fundamentalists of Hamas, security sources ward.

Moving them south has given Hamas two benefits: the Jaish al-Islam hard core which challenged its rule of the Gaza Strip has been transferred outside the enclave and secondly, the Palestinian group has help for its attacks on Israel.

It is now confirmed that the 22 Hizballah terrorists, whose escape from a Cairo jail last week was organized by Hamas, were escorted to the Gaza Strip by a heavily-armed Hamas guard which Egyptian forces failed to intercept.

The breakout also released Muslim Brotherhood activists. For Lebanese Shiite group, its chief objective was the release of Sami Shehab, one of Hizballah’s top operational commanders. His outfit has joined the Hamas-led front taking shape for a concerted terrorist campaign against.

 A senior security source reported that the Egyptian strength, though reinforced by the two battalions of 800 soldiers which Israel permitted to enter the peninsula, is totally inadequate for extending control in all parts of the peninsula. Most of that strength has been deployed in Sharm el-Sheikh and along the eastern bank of the Suez Canal, leaving the Gaza Strip and the border with Israel at the mercy of terrorists and smugglers.

Although Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and the outgoing Chief of Staff, Lt. Gen. Gaby Ashkenazi, commented on the turmoil in Egypt Monday, Feb. 7, neither referred to the dangerously out-of-control situation in Sinai nor did they mention the urgent need to address the threat to Israel’s southern border.

Netanyahu recalled the 2009 demonstrations in Iran where, he said, unlike in Egypt, “there were no talks, the people were simply killed on the streets.”

 Gen. Ashkenazi spoke of the rise of radical strength in the region. He admitted that the IDF was taken by surprise by the uprising in Egypt but, he said, no intelligence service has a crystal ball.

No one needs a crystal ball to see the terror and lawlessness closing in on Israel from its border with Sinai. It is not 1,200 kilometers away like Iran, but already present under the noses of those speakers.

Republicans have Obama in a full nelson dragging him to the center and doing more to improve his job approval rating than anything he has been able to do for himself.

 *Only hours after excoriating his own emissary to Egypt for saying Mubarak should stay through any transition Obama has reversed course and now supports the continuation of the regime of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. The flip-flopper-in-chief is said to be consider getting arm prosthesis so he can point in yet another direction all at once.

The official line is that Obama and key administration officials have been persuaded that Mubarak should not resign immediately, a position believed held by Washington until Feb. 4. Instead, officials said, Mubarak should stay until his term ends in September in an effort to retain U.S. relations with Egypt and other Arab countries as well as ensure a smooth transition toward democracy.

The unvarnished version is that to do otherwise could throw open the possibility of a takeover by radical elements of the radical Muslim Brotherhood wrecking decades of stability build around Egypt. As recently as Sunday Obama was still tacitly defending the Muslim Brotherhood in an interview with Fox News’ Bill OReilly before the Superbowl.

Super Bowl 45 set an all time record for viewers at 111,500,000.

A 14-year-old Bangladeshi girl allegedly raped by a 40-year-old married cousin has died after being publicly flogged for adultery BBC and local newspapers report.

Hena Begum was sentenced to receive 100 lashes by a village council made up of elders and Muslim clerics in the district of Shariatpur, about 35 miles from the capital, Dhaka, the BBC said today.

She endured about 80 lashes before collapsing Monday, according to The Daily Star, a Bangladeshi newspaper. Her family took her to a hospital, where she died.

“What sort of justice is this? My daughter has been beaten to death in the name of justice. If it had been a proper court then my daughter would not have died,” Dorbesh Khan, the girl’s father, told the BBC.

Family members said Hena was raped by a 40-year-old married cousin, The Daily Star said. The man’s family beat up the teen, then accused her of adultery, the newspaper said.

The very next day, she was sentenced to the flogging in a fatwa, or religious ruling, issued by the village council under Islamic Shariah law, the BBC said.

Sponsored Links Her father was also fined about $700, police told the BBC.

Four people, including a Muslim cleric, have been arrested in connection with girl’s death, the BBC said. Police said they were looking for another 14 people in the case.

Bangladesh’s high court has ordered district officials in Shariatpur to explain why they did not protect the girl, The Daily Star said. The court ruled eight months ago that Shariah punishment was illegal.

Marriage is a relationship in which one person is always right, and the other is a husband.

The mop headed Beatles first came to America February 7, 1964. - 47-years ago.
The Beatles landed at Kennedy Airport (recently renamed from Idlewild) in New York, where they were greeted by 3,000 screaming fans.

They appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show on Sunday the 9th (to a viewing audience of 73 million people out of 192 million), and played their first US concert on the 11th at the Washington Coliseum.

Last Sunday’s Super Bowl 45 snagged 111 million viewers out of 309 million Americans.

The latest Gallup poll puts Obama’s approval rating for his handling of the federal deficit at a new low - just 27 percent of Americans now approve, down from 32 percent in November, while 68 percent disapprove.

The U. S. makes more stuff than any other country pumping out 20% of everything made anywhere. China is second to the U. S. China’s total is around 19%. The U. S. total peaked at 20.1% in 1990. Manufacturing jobs are down because we no longer need a machinist standing at a lathe all day duplicating precision parts because robots do that now.

The simple fact is that computer directed robot are better, more reliable, don’t get bored and hurt and cost less than a human drill press operator.

China has the edge in menial manual labor jobs but it doesn’t take long for someone’s to figure out how to automate almost anything

A senior Loudin County, Virginia Commissioner, like California Supervisor, told me his rule was if you can find it in the yellow pages hire it done and keep government out of it.

Santa Barbara claims it is broke but it refused to run out of silly ideas. First it was spending thousands to paint fictitious blue lines to mark the supposed high water mark when global warming melted the ice caps flooding the coast. Then it was hundreds of thousands for “bulb outs” to calm traffic by narrowing streets. Then it wanted to spend $50,000 to remove rest benches along State Street so homeless could not lounge there thereby punishing everyone else. All three ideas were canned. So, what is next?